


Green Grow'th the Holly

by ceci_n_est_pas_un_corbeau



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: Dreams, Getting Together, Kissing in the Rain, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28147668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceci_n_est_pas_un_corbeau/pseuds/ceci_n_est_pas_un_corbeau
Summary: Bran has dreams, and Will knows things about them. But the answers are never quite within their reaches.
Relationships: Bran Davies/Will Stanton
Comments: 11
Kudos: 52
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Green Grow'th the Holly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leiascully](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/gifts).



Bran gets off the train in a shower of sleet under a sky as grey as sadness. But that’s winter here, isn’t it? All sleet, with a sad showing of snow if one’s very lucky. But at least, he thinks, he’ll see Will on the platform, waving and smiling his strange, sad smile. And the thought fills Bran with fear, because on the train, he dreamed of Will again. 

He’s been dreaming of Will for years, but it’s not really a dream of Will, is it? Instead, it’s a dream of ships and kings and cities. Mostly cities, really, as on the train. Leaned against the window, he fell into a vision of the long stretches of land at the river’s mouth growing into towers where the sea had been, the strange and golden sunlight gleaming down on them as in an illustration in an old book. And Will was by his side, as he always is in these dreams. Together, they’d stared at the towers and spires of the lost city on the shore, and everything felt as warm and as right as a memory. 

Bran had woken up when the train lurched to a stop, and the dream had faded, leaving only a vague unease. All childlike visions of lost lands and sea strands clad in gold faded before the rain-streaked train window, and a gnawing worry that he’d done something terribly wrong by leaving home for a week around Christmas. So Bran looked out at the rainy field, and the little stations passing, and watched as the rain turned into sleet, and now he’s here at last under a lowering sky, with Will waving from the platform. 

He’s there, of course, right where Bran hoped and expected he would be, pushing his too-long brown hair out of eyes at once distant and eager. There’s always been something strange about Will Stanton, and Bran’s known this from the moment they met. But he’s never quite known what made Will an outsider, only that this has always been what’s drawn the two of them together, made them suited to each other, like two smoothed stones pushed together by the river of time. 

“There you are!” Will calls. “Hurry up, or this’ll turn to snow!” 

“And that’s so much worse than sleet, is it?” Bran calls back, moving as quickly as he can towards Will, maneuvering his unwieldy bag with him. 

_Here I am,_ he thinks. _At Christmas, dreaming of cities on the train, and Will waiting for me with a smile that doesn’t meet his eyes._ But that sadness melts from Will’s smile, and he embraces Bran right there on the platform, a quick and furtive hug that leaves Bran wanting more. Because Bran’s been having other dreams of Will, long and wanting dreams from which he wakes tired and grasping. Dreams from which he wakes wanting, just as he as the dreams of the city make him crave answers. But there’s no time for pining now, because Will is in front of him, with his arms gently about Bran’s neck. 

“It’s been too long.” 

“That it has. All this time, you coming to Wales, and none of us realizing I could just come up here to you in England,” Bran says, hoping there’s a playful glimmer in his eye. 

“Seems odd to see you here, really,” Will says, and the far away look returns to his eyes, but Bran tries to ignore it as happiness blossoms in his heart. 

All the way from the station to the bus, and on the bus back to the Stantons’, they talk and laugh, and Will does a good job hiding whatever it is that is bothering him, while Bran drinks in the scenery as best he can. As they walk from the bus station, the sleet strengthens into a drizzly rain, and after a long and fresh-planted holly hedge, the pleasant facade of the Stanton’s home looms into view. 

Bran likes them, the hedge and the house both. They remind him of Will: plain facades that seem to speak of ancient mystery, a comfort and a warning both. And even in their obvious modernity, there is something seeming-ancient about them both. Bran smiles. He keeps smiling, indeed, through dinner, and through the pleasantries that interacting with Will’s extensive family entails, and so pass the days until Christmas, and Christmas Eve, when all goes wrong. 

Bran wakes angry and shaken on Christmas Eve, after a dream of roaring water swallowing golden towers, of Will’s hand held in his own, and it all feels like a memory of things that shall never be again. But Will’s there when he wakes, and Will’s there to listen to him speak of sadness and dreams, and so passes the day, all uneasy and freezing rain, and the temperature drops as the day drops to night, and Will says nothing save for pleasantries, until the evening, when Bran has had enough and goes to walk in the lane, Will trailing behind with his ageless concern written in every plane of his face. 

“Why are you angry?” he asks Bran. 

“Because I don’t know anything,” Bran says. “Because I had a dream tonight, and you were in it, and I think you’ve got an answer for me that you don’t or can’t tell me. That’s always been the case, isn’t it? That’s why you’ve been sad all the time.” 

“I would tell you if I thought I could,” Will says at last. “Can you at least believe that of me?” 

“No,” says Bran at last. They’re coming upon the holly hedge, shining in the rain, under the glow of the lamp post at the end of the lane. But for the rain, it would be a Christmas postcard, perfect as a picture in a book about an England only extant in fairy tales and children’s stories. “But I can try, because I think, in a way, I’ve always loved you.” 

And with that, he leans in. Will tilts his head up, as if he’s expecting this, and his lips meet Bran’s in the kiss Bran has hoped for for so long. 

Kissing Will by the holly hedge is like remembering the city in his dreams. It’s a long taste of summer in the cold and dampness of the winter, and a long escape from something that Bran can’t quite name. He opens his mouth slightly, nearly unaware of himself, and finds his teeth clack against Will’s, a surprising sensation that’s just enough to make him pull away and lurch back. But Will still stands against the hedge, and he huddles into his scarf as though he’s been chilled to the bone. 

_It’s not that cold_ , Bran wants to say, but he can’t. Maybe it is that cold to Will. Or maybe he knows that the rain is due to turn to sleet at any moment. Reflexively, he draws up the collar of his own coat, and stares at Will in the low light from the lone street lamp at the end of the lane. It’s a last vestige of countryside in a town so rapidly growing, and somehow, Bran knows that the white moths circle it in summer like something out of a poem by Yeats. 

“I should be going,” he says, as though he could wipe the kiss from his lips while he wipes his shoes on the mat. 

“You’re staying with us,” Will says. “Mum will wonder where I’ve gone if you come back alone.” 

“Where have we gone, though? What is she going to say to this.” 

“I sometimes go out walking after dark, especially in the winter. Hoping for snow, you know?” Will says, smiling ruefully. “Never been like when I was eleven, though.” 

Bran remembers that year, the reports of snow drifted up even in places where little snow ever fell, and the unusual thickness of the white flakes outside his door. It felt magical then, even more than a fine snow usually did, and he was not sure if anything in his life had ever captured that magic ever again in quite the same way. Not until he met Will. 

But hazy autumns and hazier summers came and went, and they’re older now, and maybe more 

foolish, if less impetuous. They shouldn’t have kissed, even in the darkness of the night, where anyone could have seen, Bran thinks. Maybe there’s something wrong with him, to be so lustful over a friend. But he knows that whatever this is, it is also right as well. Bran turns back to Will. 

“Snow, yeah. Yeah, I think I understand.” 

All his words have left him at last, and stranded him in the rain, with a friend who might be more, and with memories of a city in his head, and green groweth the holly behind them. He could press Will against it, kiss him again, and hope the thorns didn’t stick his skin too badly. Or he could turn back down the dark lane and return to the quiet house and all his unanswered questions. Bran breathes deeply, smelling the shivery scent of a winter’s rain, and fixes his mind on his goal. 

“I think you do too,” Will says, and there’s a strangeness in his voice, laced with a pain that Bran can’t quite decipher. “You understand in your heart, at least, even if nowhere else.” 

Bran though, isn’t much for riddles. He’s never been. His life’s a riddle, and the story of his mother is a riddle, and his father is a riddle, and Will is a riddle too. Bran is sick of puzzles and all that they conceal. So he walks straight back to Will, all hesitation gone. 

“This is the problem here, you see?” Bran says softly. “Everything you say is half mystery, half straightforward fact. You’ve been shutting me out for years, and I remember it being different once, but I don’t remember what changed. Only sun and stone, and sometimes a city stretching out where I know there’s no city.” 

“I wish I could tell you,” Will said gently. “But I don’t know if you’d remember even if I tried. I don’t know what it would do.” 

“What can it do? Upset the order of the universe?” Bran scoffs. 

Will looks suddenly serious, and he hunches back into his coat. 

“Maybe?” 

“That’s ridiculous.” 

It’s so ridiculous, in fact, that Bran leans in and kisses Will again, this time an impudent peck square on his pursed lips. Will smiles against his lips, and raises a hand to pull Bran in closer, bringing them together, forcing his mouth open, still clumsy, but with more passion than surprise now. And for all that Bran loves it, for all that Bran has dreamed of this moment, he still knows it’s just evasion. Again he breaks the kiss, and this time he knows he must, or Will will wrap himself back up in secrets all over again. So, with an ache in his heart, he pulls back. Will looks at him, stern and slightly woeful. _If everything’s alright later, I’ll kiss him silly_ , Bran thinks. _Until he tells me everything until it takes._

“You said you dreamed of cities,” Will says. “Tell me about the city.” 

“It’s beautiful. Like something out of a fairy story, stretching out on the shore where no city should be, but there’s a storm brewing behind it. And there’s a sword, and you’re there. Always you. Sometimes the waves crash over us, but we’re never apart. I’ve been dreaming it for years. And it’s always the same.” 

“You remember the Lost Land,” Will breathes. “And the storm. Do you remember the sword? The ship? The movement of time? The Riders?” 

The words wash over Bran, powerful and intoxicating, like the strongest liquor he’s ever drunk. They tug at the shapeless edges of his recollection, sending him through a wheel of seasons, forgetful of the winter’s drizzle. But they mean nothing. He grasps and yet he cannot grab hold. 

“No,” he tells Will at last. “I don’t. Should I?” 

“No, you shouldn’t. You probably shouldn’t remember the Lost Land actually.” 

“You talk about it as though it’s a real place, and I want to know all about it.” 

Will smiles, again that rueful crooked smile that Bran has never before seen him wear save in passing. 

“I can try to tell you,” he says, “but I’m not sure if it will properly stick.” 

“I think it will, when we’re out of this drizzle,” Bran says. 

“I wouldn’t be so sure you could call it a drizzle,” Will replies. “In fact, I think it’s going to snow.” 

And indeed, as they walk back down the dark and dripping lane, a few small white flakes begin to fall. 


End file.
